Rabbinical Alliance Raps Tv Show

December 7, 1972

NEW YORK (Dec. 6)

The Rabbinical Alliance of America called today upon the management of WCBS-TV to discontinue the “Bridget Loves Bernie” program. The half-hour Saturday night comedy is about an intermarried Jewish-Catholic young couple and their parents. The RAA stated that this television series “is a flagrant insult and act of disrespect to Orthodox Judaism and to all Orthodox Jews, as well as an affront to most non-Orthodox Jews.”

The RAA, which also called upon the sponsors of the program to withdraw, noted that “religion is not a joke or a nonsensical anachronism” and that “we cannot accept with equanimity this series’ encouragement of the spiritual genocide of American Jewry through intermarriage,” The stand by the RAA was endorsed by Nash Kestenbaum, president of the National Council of Young Israel. Other Jewish organizations and religious groups have also condemned the television series as an affront to the Judaica view on intermarriage.